Style-wonkette notes about fashion and personal style from Fort Smith, Arkansas, deep in rural America. For mature women, beldames, women of a certain age, matriarchs and fully grown-up females. Age is not nearly as important as your eye for style.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

This story was inspired by an old
nursery rhyme that you all may know ...

There was an old woman who lived in a
shoe.

She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;

She
gave them some broth without any bread;

She whipp'd all their
bums, and sent them to bed.

from J. Ritson,

Gammer Gurton's Garland,

or The Nursery Parnassus: a
choice collection of pretty songs

and verses for the amusement of
all little good children who

can neither read nor run

(1794, rpt., Glasgow,
1866), p. 27.

(Or Mother Goose.
Whichever.)

Once upon a time, in a backward little village, far, far away from anywhere of any consequence, there was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Classic Stiletto-Heeled Black Pump. (We'll just call her Old Woman because it's much easier. ) She had so many pets, she didn't know what to do, but that's another story for another time.

One morning, Old Woman stirred her old
bones early to go to market and resume her
unending quest for the most magical and elusive of wardrobe
pieces; the Perfect Crisp White Shirt. Late that afternoon, as Old
Woman flipped wearily through the Women's Medium Long Sleeved Shirts
rack at Ye Olde Discount Department Store, she was startled when ...
POP! ... the great designer Carolina Herrera suddenly appeared at her
side, as if out of nowhere!

"Old Woman," the great
designer began. "I know of your sincere desire to find the
fabled Unicorn of Fashion, the Perfect Crisp White Shirt, " she
continued, in perfectly elegant, Spanish-accented English. "Why, Old Woman, do your eyes bug
out so? You should see a doctor about that. And you may close your
mouth, now. It looks very stupid."

"I'm sorry ... who are you?
You look like Carolina Herrera, but you can't be," Old Woman
stammered.

"That was fast. You're smarter
than you look," the apparition murmured to her self. "Okay,
so you found me out. I'm just a figment of your imagination. An
illusion. The psychological manifestation of your anxiety caused by
your foolish fixation on one, impossibly perfect item of clothing,"
she continued, her exotic accent turning abruptly into a Midwestern
version of American English. "But illusory help is better than
no help at all. And you need help, you know? Besides, you can't
afford the real Carolina Herrera. "

"Hey ..." Old Woman began
defensively.

"Here's the deal," the
apparition interrupted sharply. "Rather than just granting your
wish, all poof-and-there-it-is, I'm advising you to grab the very
next white shirt that you come upon in this rack, and actually go and
try it on. You'll be glad you did, I promise. But remember this;
unicorns come in dark neutrals as well," she said, in a
more kindly tone.

Then, as abruptly as she arrived ...
Pop! ... the spitting image of Carolina Herrera disappeared. Only
then did Old Woman notice other women near her giving her some
seriously suspicious side-eye and pulling their children closer.

Old Woman decided, for once in her
life, to do precisely what she'd been advised and sure enough, she
soon came upon a lovely, tailored white shirt by Jones New York. The
moment she touched it, the shirt whispered to her, " I am the
shirt you desire. I am the White Unicorn of tailored shirts. Take
me home with you. And while you're at it, take my sister ... the
shirt right behind me on this rack. She is the fabled Black Unicorn,
and just as rare and magical."

"Time to get my blood sugar
checked," Old Woman decided as she carried both shirts to the
fitting room. "Or maybe just skip that second glass of wine with
lunch ..."

As all good stories do, Dear Reader,
this one has a happy ending. Old Woman ended her quest with more
than she dreamed of, and took both shirts home at significantly less
than suggested retail price. She hung them in her closet, and the
shirts chatted happily to one another about their new home and how
inferior the rest of the clothes were, giggling about their escape
from the Final Clearance rack. They chattered on, non-stop. Into the wee hours of the
morning. And because they kept the Old Woman awake with their
merriment, she got up from her bed, threw both shirts into the
washing machine and laundered them in cold water with no chlorine
bleach as the instructions advised, in Woolite and on the longest
possible wash setting. In the morning she dried them thoroughly on
the Permanent Press cycle and hung them back in the closet.

But now, they were silent and never,
ever spoke to anyone again, because, as everyone knows, washing a new shirt takes all the magic out of it as well as the factory sizing.

But Old Woman was pretty sure she'd wear them Happily Ever After
anyway.

Carolina Herrera (the real one)in her signature white shirt

Me (AKA Old Woman) having my own budget-Carolina Herrera moment inJones New York. Still ... not bad.

Of course, she does it in black, as well.

And so does Jones New York! So happy .....

Update (11/10) I'm going over to Patti's Visible Monday ... come see what all the fuss is about!

Monday, October 20, 2014

If I hear Heidi Freaking Klum or Nina
Freaking Garcia say one more time, "That looks old lady"
when they mean dowdy, old fashioned, unfashionable, outmoded,
out-of-date, passé, unstylish, or frumpy, I will be forced to
reconsider my weekly indulgence in one of my favorite guilty
pleasures: watching Project Runway. (I participate in lots of other
light-minded pleasures and activities. I just don't feel guilty when
I indulge in them.)

I'll miss you, Tim Gunn. But I have to
say, Tim, you should be all over this one and on my side.

It is just plain ageist, incorrect and
mean-spirited to employ two words that describe an at least
passably well-behaved and civilized woman who has attained a
considerable number of years past her youth when
Ms Klum attempts to describe an especially unhip outfit made by one
of the anxious competitors. The fact of a woman's age doesn't and never should automatically define her stylishness or un. When Klum says this, she
implies that we old women look dowdy in whatever we're wearing
simply because we are not young, no matter how great our clothing
might be without us in them. Oldness makes everything about us
uncool.

She
uses this phrase fairly frequently, and I cringe for her when she
does it. I try to remember that as a non-native speaker she does
worlds better in English than I do in her native German, and I can
understand her searching for a word while on camera. But it isn't
live-broadcast, so somebody needs to look at editing out this gaffe
the next time it occurs. Really, it's important to at least be clear
and respectful when she's paid as much as she is to opine about
something as subjective as the hipness of clothing design.

Garcia
often climbs on the band-wagon with Klum, but sometimes has the grace
to use other, only slightly less offensive terms such as madame,
or mother-of-the-bride
in the same insensitive way. As
the 49-year-old mother of young sons, it is likely that she will one
day wear her carefully chosen and couture outfits at the nuptials of
her grown boys, and she won't be a spring chicken by that time,
either. I guarantee that she won't like to hear her ensemble
unkindly described as "soooo mother-of-the-groom."
I'd offer her the excuse that she may well not have been a childhood
speaker of idiomatic English as she was born in Columbia, but I
won't because she holds a bachelor's degree from Boston
University as well as a second one from FIT.

Yooo-hooo, Ms. Klum and Ms. Garcia.
Hellooooo. We're sitting right here in front of the TV. We're old
but we can still hear you.

I know. It's American Reality TV.
Therefore, I should not be surprised. I also know this isn't
so-much-of-a-much all in itself, and the next, most obvious step
should be to let it go now that I've vented. But it's been a week
where I've been noticing more disdain exhibited towards older women
than usual in our language and popular culture and media, and it's
been frustrating. I beg that my darling vintage-enthusiast friends
will cut me a bit of slack and not pummel me for equating only
current, knife-edge newness with great style. I do not mean that at
all. It's the equation of advanced age and non-style that I object
to. I've been chastised black and blue because I neglected to
clarify my smarty-pants glibness. Completely black and blue, I tell
you.

In fact, since I'm bound to offend
someone, I'll apologize ahead of time and show my contrition by
wearing my black and blue shame right out in the open; in a very soft
and comforting blue Max Studio extra-fine merino wool sweater over my
Old Navy black and blue hounds-tooth Pixie Pants. And my navy,
cobalt and black suede d'Orsay ankle-strap pumps ... more black and
blue, from me to you.

Oh, yeah. And my sleek and snazzy Old
Lady bag, too.

Snap to you, Heidi.

Taking this silliness to the Lovely
Lacy Patti at her Visible Monday link-up.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

These three women, youngish at 37, 46
and 41 respectively, all established writers beyond the fashion
industry, all with their own serious professional chops, got together
and devised over 100 questions, organized them into a questionnaire,
and compiled the responses of 639 of the women who answered them.
Then they made a huge book of it all, plus additional conversations,
photography and illustrations.

Beyond those specifics, it's not an
easy book to describe. A few famous names that I recognized offered
their opinions, and quite a number of highly accomplished women that
I'd never heard of but probably should have recognized. But for the
most part, the women who responded were from almost everywhere, from
very rich to the very poor. A few very young girls spoke, a few very
old women, but mostly from twenty, thirty and forty-somethings. What
they all had in common was that they all had worn clothing for their
whole lives and were happy to talk about the impact all these clothes
had on those lives. " Women in Clothes" makes a wonderfully
rich compendium of little story-snippets, each reflecting the
sometimes life-altering impact what we choose to put on our backs can
have.

In her review that appeared in the
September 25th edition of The New Yorker, Judith Therman described
the book as "a communal dressing room in book form." That
was a pretty apt and concise description. (In fact, I recommend her
review as a very good read all in itself... you can find it HERE .)
Expanding on her analogy, I'd ask you imagine the biggest football
stadium you can think of, and imagine the field packed with hundreds
of dressing room cubicles; nice ones, crummy ones, all sizes. Then
imagine them all crowded with hundreds of women; all shapes, sizes,
ethnicities, all ages and all trying on clothes. Talking about
clothes, looking at clothes, critiquing the garments of their own and
others. Imagine you can hear snippets of conversation, but never the
whole of one, then imagine someone organized it all for you and made
it readable. That's what the book was like for me.

Below are just a few of the questions
that grabbed me. Since I am a chronic button-hole gazer, you can see
why these subjects were right up my alley. You can see the whole list
at the book website HERE , and answer them all for yourself.
It seems that the editors are posting these responses as sort of a
DIY online addenda to the book. I was completely charmed with this
idea that allows the reader to join in after the fact.

What are some rules about dressing you
follow, but you wouldn't necessarily recommend to others?

What is the most transformative
conversation you have ever had on the subject of fashion or style?

Was there a point in your life when
your style changed dramatically? What happened?

Please describe your body.

Please describe your mind.

Please describe your emotions.

With whom do you talk about clothes?

How do institutions affect the way
you dress?

Did anyone every say anything to you hat made you see yourself differently, on a physical and especially sartorial level?

Weighing in at 518 pages, this is a
fabulous book to download onto your tablet. It's ideal for toting
around this way, and the editors have broken it down into bite sized
segments that make it easy to enjoy in spare moments or when you can
settle in for a deep read. Between these segments, the editors have
interspersed photographic "Collections" of items belonging
to their respondents. Many of them are what one would expect; one
woman's collection of cashmere sweaters, another's fedoras, or
another's collection of vintage three-inch heels. It was less clear
to me the value of presenting collections of one woman's earplugs, a
collection of identical dental-floss sticks, a collection of a week's worth of
one woman's cigarette butts, and another of someone's collection of
individual bobby-pins. Quirky. Certainly they added an element of
artsy-fartsy charm, but I can get behind even that when judiciously
presented.

Another section belonged to
photographic "Projects". One of the most memorable was
"Poses from Fashion Media" featuring actress Zosia Mamet
clad in a plain black leotard against a white background, aping the
essential silliness of each famous magazine pose. You'll instantly
remember looking at heavily editorial fashion pages and ads,
wondering what the magazine pros were thinking by using such
improbable and unlikely arrangements of a woman's body to show how
clothes could look. Cute commentary, but since there were 50 of
them, and I'd gotten the point very quickly ... certainly by about
the third one, and was ready to move on after the 15th one ... I felt
more editing might have yielded a less-is-more effect. Overall,
though, the sometimes silly but more often poignant visuals in the
book jived beautifully with the very basic and very personal
conversation about how we feel about what we wear and carry and
conceal. One certainly gets the impression that nothing important was
edited out and lost for lack of space.

When time permits, and I'll make time
soon, I'm going back to the site the editors have provided and join
the other women who have submitted their survey responses. I'd like
to hear from any of you that decide to do likewise ... let me know
and I'll be delighted to read what you have to say. In fact, a visit
to the site and a look at the questions will tell you whether or not
you'll enjoy the book itself. If you're reading this, and you
bother to blog yourself, I'll bet you will.

~*~*~*~*~

WIW in to the Big City on the hot, humid Sunday afternoon. My attempt to suggest fall-ishness with with oxblood and get one more wearing out of my favorite summery crop top.

Got a lovely compliment from a 20 something, hipsterish guy out with his girlfriend. "Love your outfit," he said with a charming smile for us as we entered the restaurant. Nice. Very nice.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Checking in late but repentant at the always forgiving Patti at her Visible Monday link-up. Come see what everyone is wearing!

Visible Monday

Wonderful Team Member Readership Award

"Women always try to tame themselves as they get older, but the ones who look best are often a bit wilder. Thinking about age all the time is the biggest prison women can make for themselves." - Miuccia Prada